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It bugged me two days ago when I was tying a Royal Coachman (wet). I was about to tie on the wings when I noticed I forgot to tie in the darn tail!! Bugged me so much I got up and it's still hanging on the vise. I think the fix will be to put in a different wing and call it something else.

Most of the above. The clunk of the bobbin hitting the base when you were just trimming the excess feathers. The mess you get on the front of your shirt while tying (I keep a lint roller handy to bench at all times now). I am inherently clumsy and tip stuff and knock it off the bench all the time. This is why I TRY to always put caps back on immediately but doesn't always work. As for dropped hooks I keep the world's strongest extendable magnet at desk and when I run it on hardwood floor to find a hook I usually come up with a couple and a fly to boot. Also keep a big 8"x2" sweeper magnet on stalk for major work and nice thing about tungsten beads is they do get picked up by strong magnets.

Had an unusual happening with a dropped hook last week. First, I have no idea how the hook ended up on the back side of my shorts. Drop hooks all the time but not on my chair since I'm sitting on it. However I was going to get in shower and dropping shorts and something hurt about halfway down my right cheek. Tried to pull it free and it really hurt. Had to call wife to see what was going on. Had about a size 20 hook hooked in my shorts and buried in my cheek. She kept tentatively trying to get it out and just made it hurt worse. I finally had her get the needlenose and grab it and pull it out of there even if some meat came with. Well, it came out but dang I feel sorry for fish now and will go totally barbless after this.

I've had many over the years, including most of the ones already mentioned, but my #1 has to be cutting or puncturing my fingers with razor blades or hook points to the point of drawing enough blood to require a Band-Aid. My tying bench is in the basement, and at the opposite end of the house from the bathroom where the band-aids are kept, so it's a good 5-10 minute distraction from tying, at minimum. As my ex-father-in-law would say, it really frosts my cookies.

Of course, as I've been typing this post, it has (at last) occurred to me that what a smart person would do is just keep a box of band-aids on the tying bench....huh. Only took twenty years for that to dawn on me. :- /

"... trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience." -- John Voelker (aka Robert Traver), Testament of a Fisherman